


a universal history of the destruction of terra

by 8611



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Gore, M/M, Mirror Universe, Torture, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-26
Updated: 2013-03-26
Packaged: 2017-12-06 14:51:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/736912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/8611/pseuds/8611
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The fall of the Terran Empire.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a universal history of the destruction of terra

**Author's Note:**

> Old work once again, this time something I wrote for a prompt - "The fall of the Terran Empire." No original notes because it was originally posted on a kink meme. PLEASE CHECK THE TAGS/WARNINGS, there's a lot of blood and a lot of bodies in here. 
> 
> The reason that this title is similar to 'an oral history' is because I totally ganked the idea from this fic. The two fics are totally unrelated.
> 
> Reposted at the request of [affectingly](http://archiveofourown.org/users/affectingly). <3

The world does not end with a bang. It ends with a transmission. Uhura picks it up – realizing that one last transmission from Earth and then nothing, empty sound and empty space, means something – and listens to it quietly at her station while the Captain is cracking jokes at the expensive of one of the security personnel on the bridge. 

_Terran Empire defense call 09-44BG5-NN083 as authorized by Emperor Jonathan Archer requesting immediate ev-_

That’s where it cuts off. Uhura stills, her fingers hovering over her read out. She realizes that her hand is shaking. She must have done something to give herself away, because she realizes the bridge has gone silent. 

“Lieutenant?” That’s the Captain, but she’s frantically checking all subspace transmission, everything, every channel, everywhere, but there’s nothing from Earth, nothing from the Empire, only ships, only them- “Uhura!”

She spins around in her chair. The whole command staff is staring at her, and Kirk is watching her quietly. 

“Do you have something you’d like to share with the class, LT?” Kirk settles back in his chair, but he doesn’t look bored, he looks like he’s deciding how much time she’s spending in the booth for not listening to him. 

“We need to plot a course for Earth.” She’s aware what she’s doing. Spock looks up at her from his station a few down, one eyebrow raised. 

“And why’s that?” Kirk’s still too calm.

“I-“ Uhura takes a moment to sit up straight, smoothing down her skin. “I believe the Empire may have been compromised in some way.” 

\---

Where Earth once was there’s now the ruins of a solar system. 

When it comes on the viewscreen McCoy makes a noise like a dying man, a heaving sob that’s giving too much emotion away, but anyone with half a brain knows that there was a young girl on that planet who McCoy had killed for on more than one occasion, who meant the world to him. 

Kirk’s standing in front of the screen showing no emotion. 

McCoy slumps down in the Captain’s chair, and everyone holds their breath, waiting for Kirk to say something. He doesn’t. When a red shirt strides over to be the hero and gruffly orders McCoy out of the chair he only makes it as far as the second word before he’s sliding off of the curved, ancient blade that McCoy always carries. He gurgles on the floor as the crew watches McCoy straddle him and then take his head off. It goes rolling weakly to the side. The floor around the chair seeps red. 

Kirk still doesn’t move. They’ve received a few scattered communications from other ships. Uhura’s got the sinking suspicion that Archer made it off the planet. However, very clearly, none of the ships in spacedock are left. Uhura forwards all comms from other ships in communication range straight to Kirk’s ready room, knowing he doesn’t want to deal with that right now. 

“McCoy.” It’s the first thing Kirk’s said since Chekov confirmed that the gravity where Earth was supposed to be was very clearly wrong. Kirk turns around and strides past McCoy, stepping in the pool of blood under the chair, and McCoy follows him like it’s the only thing he knows what to do. 

The minute the door to Kirk’s ready room closes the bridge becomes a flurry of activity, Uhura relaying what she’s picked up to the other comm officers, the blue shirts trying to figure out what did this, people trying not to let it show that something is wrong, that they’ve just lost whole families. 

Uhura has to take a brief second to wonder if this is how Spock feels, working himself into to the ground to forget that he no longer has a home planet.

\---

Jim fucks Bones over the desk in his ready room, harsh and fast and it makes Bones scrabble at the wood top, shoving back against Jim because right now all they need to feel are the hard edges of the desk and the scratch of fingernails and the burn of clothes rubbing against skin. When Jim comes he lets one single “ _fuck_ ” drop from his lips and then he’s sagging against the ground, Bones going right down with him so that Bones can cradle Jim against his chest like a child. 

They’re a mess – emotion and come and sweat all over them, their uniforms half on and half rumpled – and Bones lets his head thunk back against the desk, sucking in air through his nose with his lips pressed into a thin line. 

“I –“ Jim starts, no clue how to finish, no clue how to do _anything_. There’s no one giving orders that he has to sneer at but follow. There’s no promise of the admirals flaying him alive or taking away command because he pissed them off. There’s no nothing. His whole life he’s been fighting up and against the heel of the Empire so that he can get higher and higher and destroy those below him who thought it would be funny to piss on him. 

Jim tries to figure out how to push forward, how to make this work, barely aware of the fact that Bones is holding him too tight and that he’s heaving dry sobs that sound like he’s sick. Jim knows that there will be bodies all over the ship tonight – Bones isn’t the only one who deals badly with the unknown. He and Chekov could paint every single deck red between the two of them and their barely controlled anger issues. 

Jim digs his nails into his palms so hard he bleeds, and he sucks the blood off of his skin while he thinks, forcing his mind on the straight and narrow, down to one steal beam, one laser, one single point in an infinite amount. 

“Do you have connections with medical personnel on the other ships we know are still operational?” Jim has to concentrate on this or he’ll fall apart. 

“Yeah,” Bones rumbles, his throat sounding like he’s been swallowing sand all day. 

“Tell them to kill their captains. I want the first officers of the Hood, Yorktown and Nimitz pulled up. If you feel any of their CMOs are useless, have them killed too.” Jim feels Bones’ confusion more than he sees it. “I know you hate Puri. Take him out personally if you want to. We’re within beaming range of the Yorktown.” 

When Bones shows up at 0300 ship’s time the next morning he’s got dry blood crusted to his hands and uniform. He nearly punches a hole through the wall of the sonic. 

\---

Almost immediately there is chaos. The weaker, stupider captains that Jim hadn’t had killed try to make moves, nothing but pawns with no king or queen anymore. Of the 14 carriers left in the fleet six are reduced to rubble within the first week. The three ships that now have first officers acting as captains grudgingly admit that Kirk knows what he’s doing. 

Kirk takes out three more of the carriers like it’s a joyride, even though it looses him a decent amount of personnel and earns him a leaking warp core. Scotty fixes it, but then McCoy spends the next ten hours frantically trying not to loose him to radiation sickness. In the end he’s fine, save for the fact that he’s got a brand new androidic left arm below the elbow. Scotty doesn’t seem incredibly broken up about that turn of events. 

Kirk looses two heads of security in the second week. After that every red shirt on the ship gives Sulu and Chekov an incredibly wide birth. 

It takes Kirk a month to track down Archer. It costs him half of the people on his ship and earns him a few new scars. Staging a literal invasion of Archer’s personal ship might be the dumbest idea in the known universe, but there hasn’t been a lot of thinking going on lately. It’s even rubbing off on Spock, the way his eyes flash and his edges are fraying.

Sulu goes charging off with Kirk and Spock, and that leaves McCoy and Chekov in the transporter room of Archer’s ship with a very angry security detail. A very angry and very _stupid_ security detail.

“I take one on right, you left?” Chekov mutters, producing the meanest looking daggers from where, McCoy’s not sure. It’s like they appear out of thin air, and Chekov doesn’t even give McCoy a chance to reply before he’s thrown one of them, slamming it into the front goon’s forehead.

The thing about taking thugs down is that it’s easy. You don’t have to stab a man in the heart to kill him, and yet their upper torsos and heads are the only place they actively protect. It’s easy for McCoy to drop down and sever their Achilles’, and as they crumple all he’s got to do is slice deep enough to let them bleed out from their femoral arteries. Of course, stabbing someone in the back of the head who’s twitching on the ground is always satisfying, in the way that the noise of knife on bone always is. 

Chekov’s left his guard alive, and he’s currently got him propped up against the wall, his daggers buried in his stomach on either side. He’s gasping as Chekov very calmly slices off the skin around the bones of his toes, and when he asks a question and doesn’t get an answer, he yanks the bone apart. The man’s far enough gone that he probably couldn’t even count to five, but McCoy leaves Chekov to his fun – the kid’s face is lit up like it’s fucking Christmas. 

McCoy doesn’t really know where he’s going after he leaves the transporter room. Archer’s ship is much smaller than the Enterprise but designed similarly, the curved walls a light grey and the floor the same slate black as their own girl. However, the Enterprise is battle scarred inside and out, and this ship is new, unmarked. It feels wrong, and he runs his hand over the walls as he walks, expecting little dents and crevices, cut marks and burns, but there’s nothing. 

The sick bay’s easy to find, and when the door doesn’t take any of his codes he just blasts it open instead. No one’s inside, they’d probably all run when Archer had first gotten wind of the Enterprise’s crew on his ship. Archer’s a fan of evacuation orders. Especially if they keep him alive. 

The place looks like a torture chamber – there are various alien machines marked in languages that McCoy’s only seen in books stacked up the walls, and then some downright medieval equipment stuck in the nooks and crannies. McCoy has a love of old Terran medicine, but this is older than that – in the middle of the bay there’s an old-fashioned fire pit, a few iron brands resting in the mostly cool coals. McCoy pulls one out, looking around as he does. There are bodies stacked on some of the beds, two on one, and there’s blue blood seeping out from a door on the far wall. He can’t figure out what all the dead aliens are – he spots a pair of Vulcan or Romulan ears in a dish next to a body that doesn’t even look humanoid anymore it’s been ripped so far apart, the dazzlingly green skin of an Orion, something with only three fingers and hoof like feet, plenty of humans. 

The brand is a twisted version of the Empire’s insignia – Archer’s own personal seal. McCoy lets it clatter to the floor in anger – this is _disgusting_. He might not have the highest regard for human life, but he still heals, he still fixes. He always leaves any cadaver he does research on sealed up and put back together. He’s never ripped someone apart just for the ripping, at least not in his own sickbay. The branding iron staring up at him almost makes him want to throw up. 

“What are you –“ there’s someone at the door, and one quick looks confirms exactly where the person’s heart is. McCoy throws his smaller knife, and it slices into the chest of the man, who looks down at it confusion. It would have killed him, but he’s a Denobulan. McCoy forgot that Archer had aliens on his crew. When the man goes for his blaster McCoy is across the room and driving his knife into the guy’s side, where his heart actually is.

“What-“ he tries again, struggling to speak. McCoy wishes Denobulans died faster. Strong fingers come up to clamp onto McCoy’s arm as the man sinks to the floor. “What?”

“Have fun with your playthings in Hell,” McCoy hisses, yanking his knife back out and then slamming a boot down on the man’s skull, all his weight and force behind it until he finally hears a crack. 

He leaves who he realizes must be Phlox dying on the ground, bleeding out of his ears and his side. 

\---

Kirk catches Archer seconds from an escape pod. 

“My current helmsman has orders to fire on any escape pods that leave this ship, and she has _excellent_ aim.” Kirk’s aware that aim has jack shit to do with space combat, but it sounds better than saying ‘my ship’s weapons systems are up to snuff’. Which isn’t true either – Scotty wouldn’t let his girl out into the universe with anything less than the best he can think up, which places the Enterprise above almost every single other ship in the Empire’s fleet. 

“Kirk. Wonder when you’d get here.” Archer’s finding it hard to speak. It’s probably got something to do with the fact that Kirk’s got his hand around his throat. 

“You were actually fairly good at avoiding us for a while,” Kirk says simply as he hears a howl of rage from behind him that almost causes him to tear his eyes away from Archer – it’s Spock. He hopes it’s got something to do with the fact that he’s fighting Archer’s own personal Vulcan and he’s just got a worthy opponent for once. Still, that amount of emotion out of Spock means something bad. Like, my-mother-is-dead-and-my-planet-has-been-destroyed levels of bad. 

“There’s a reason I’m in control,” Archer chokes out, and swings a knee up into Kirk’s hip. It’s enough to let him out of Kirk’s grip, and he’s able to pull his phaser. Kirk grabs his arm, but the shot still singes across his side, taking some flesh with it. That’s going to hurt, but it’s nothing more than a nuisance.

Archer’s got a dagger on him too, one of those overly ceremonial ones that all the admirals carried when Earth still existed, and it’s clearly not balanced the best it could be. It’s easy for Kirk to slip in, he’s faster, lighter, and he taunts Archer, leaving cuts deep enough to hurt and hinder but not kill each time he darts in. 

“You’ve realized that you’re not going to win this.” Archer smirks. “Really, you had no chance anyway. Where’s the rest of your team? Dead? Your pretty doctor – your _toy_ – was he the first to go? Crying _do no harm_?” 

For that Kirk slashes his knife down across Archer’s shoulder, grinning when Archer staggers backwards and hits the wall, realizing he can’t really move that arm anymore. 

“My toy? You think he’s my _toy_?” Kirk slices off the fingers of Archer’s other hand, and his knife and the digits fall to the floor, a sick splatter-clink noise. For the first time he looks afraid. “Bones probably has half your crew dead by now. He’s the second most lethal man in my Empire.”

“Yours? It isn’t yours, kid, it’s mine. Always has been, always will be. You have your ship because I allowed that to happen.” Kirk presses his blade to Archer’s throat as he speaks. A body thumps to the floor behind him, followed by another. There’s the briefest glimmer of grief in Archer’s eye for a second, but Kirk catches it. Good. The Vulcan’s probably one of the bodies that just hit the ground. 

“No, it’s not.” Kirk presses the blade closer. “It’s _mine_.” 

It’s been a while since he’s been able to kill a man the old fashioned way – clean slice across his throat. He thinks it’s oddly fitting. 

\---

They airlock the bodies of Archer and his command crew with SOS beacons cobbled onto their chests and backs. It’s a warning, but also an announcement. They carry the Enterprise’s signature. 

McCoy is silent all the way back to their ship, and Kirk watches him out of the corner of his eye. He’s too high on adrenalin to worry about McCoy right now, and really, he’s never had to worry about McCoy. He wasn’t bluffing when he told Archer that the second worst person to run into in a dark alley was McCoy.

Uhura’s waiting when they get back, as is Chapel. Sulu’s lost a fair bit of blood, so before he can go relieve McKenna he stumbles off to sickbay for a transfusion, Chapel holding him up. Spock’s missing the top half of his left ear, but he refuses to get it looked at, claiming he’ll mediate on it, which makes McCoy snort and roll his eyes, which is the most emotion Kirk’s seen out of him in the past hour. 

Chekov runs after Sulu. McCoy watches him go with something written on his face that Kirk can’t read. 

“You’re now fucking the Emperor of the Terran Empire, what’s stuck up your ass?” he finally snaps at Bones, if only to get a reaction out of him. Jim’s never seen him this quiet in his life. They walk to the bridge with Bones staring straight ahead, hands behind his back. It’s reminding Jim of Spock and it’s driving him nuts. 

“Jim-“ Bones stops him before he can open the door to the bridge. “Do you- do you know who Josef Mengele was?” 

“Yeah, course I do. Everyone does.” Even in a world that’s fishy on the correct definition of true evil, pretty much everyone can agree that he was death incarnate. When Bones still doesn’t move, something snaps to attention in Jim’s brain. “You saw Phlox’s sick bay.”

“He didn’t even bother suturing cadavers back up,” Bones says, something like revulsion coloring his words. “He had them _branded_ , Jim.” Bones finally turns to him, looking fundamentally broken in some way. 

“You’re not him. You’re not either of them. _Ever_ , you hear me?” Jim knows what he’s about to do is risky, but who’s going to stop him? He’s the goddamn fucking _Emperor_. He cups Bones’ face in his hands, pressing a fierce kiss to his mouth, biting at his lips, and when Bones finally moans he slips his hands under Jim’s tunic so that he can grasp at Jim’s hips just a little too hard, walking them backwards. They hit the door to the bridge with a dull thump that everyone inside has to have heard, but Jim doesn’t care. He realizes that Bones not showing any emotion was scaring the shit out of him, and now this, this gorgeously passionate man being back, under his hands, is doing things to him. 

“You’ll never be like that,” Jim whispers between kisses to Bones’ eyelids, jaw, neck, anywhere. “You never kill unless you have to, you always come back, you know you can’t cure death but you try, not for you, but for me and for my crew.” 

Bones moans helplessly against his mouth when he hauls him in for another kiss, and then Jim is laughing, against Bones’ lips and Bones is pulling back and looking at Jim like he’s insane. 

“I won,” Jim huffs out, letting his head thunk against the door. “I’m in control of the goddamn Empire.” 

“There’s no Empire anymore,” Bones points out, running his hands through Jim’s hair and kissing him again before resting their foreheads together. “Just you.”

“Just us,” Jim corrects, and he sees just the briefest of smiles creep across Bones’ lips. 

“Yeah, just us,” Bones agrees, closing his eyes and smiling, forehead still pressed against Jim’s.


End file.
